days afterwards a lady comes to offer him her thanks—it is Josephine de Beauharnais, the mother of the boy.
For the first time this rustic of twenty-six years, who knows only the revolutionary armies, to whom no woman has ever paid any particular attention, sees before him one of those beautiful, elegant, and attractive women whom hitherto he has only seen from the distance of the pit of a theatre, and he finds himself in the position which most flatters his pride—that of offering protection; and with this rôle, which he plays for the first time, he is delighted beyond all words.
VIII.
SHE.
Josephine, on the other hand, was at this moment in desperate case. She had narrowly escaped guillotining, as everybody knows, by the overthrow of Robespierre; released from prison she found herself a widow of more than thirty years, with two children, and with scarcely anything left from the ruin of her fortune. A Creole, unable at any period of her life to take any account of money, extravagant, fond of elegance, dress and pleasure, there is nothing for her but to beg for money from her relatives in far Martinique; to borrow some from those nearer home; to borrow from others who are not friends; and above all, to
